Thursday
Mine! Mine! Mine!
In honor of the release of Wall-E, Vulture ranks all eight Pixar feature films. But their rankings are completely wrong. I am, however, in total agreement with their note that they like even the movie they have ranked as worst, none of the Pixar movies I've seen have been anything less than very good. They also explain their rankings, a little bit, but they get paid to blog. I don't, so here are mine sans explanation:
Not seen: A Bug's Life
Not seen: Cars
6: Ratatouille
5: Finding Nemo
4: Toy Story
3: Monsters, Inc.
2: The Incredibles
1: Toy Story 2
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Not seen: A Bug's Life
Not seen: Cars
6: Ratatouille
5: Finding Nemo
4: Toy Story
3: Monsters, Inc.
2: The Incredibles
1: Toy Story 2
Cold, getting colder
I haven't read yesterday's Supreme Court opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the opinion ruling that Louisiana's law applying the death penalty to the rape of a minor was a cruel and unusual punishment, but Publius's post on it motivated me to go back and read my own thoughts from when Roper came down, and an interesting argument I had, mostly with a commenter named cmdicely, in the comments to someone else's post about Roper. I think cmdicely actually has the better of the argument, at least in some ways.
In related news, all Au Bon Pain stores in New York started giving out free ice coffee forty six minutes ago and will continue to do so until they close today. I've never had their iced coffee, but their regular blend does nothing for me.
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In related news, all Au Bon Pain stores in New York started giving out free ice coffee forty six minutes ago and will continue to do so until they close today. I've never had their iced coffee, but their regular blend does nothing for me.
Wednesday
From global to local
Joe Klein, who has been, for good reason, a favorite target of many liberal bloggers for years, and still is when it comes to, e.g. FISA-reform, had a good post yesterday reacting to David Brooks's “The surge is so great, you anti-war types can suck a lemon” column. I actually think Joe doesn't take seriously enough the idea that violence would have gone down irrespective of the surge strategy (not to say it would have decreased by the same amount, but that the difference in amounts is hard to know), and that a withdrawal strategy would have created more space for political reconciliation in Iraq, given us more issues to negotiate with Iran over (it's hard to persuade a nation not to interfere in the country next to them while we're increasing our presence there), allowed more use of resources in Afghanistan and freed up funding for domestic priorities, and that therefore the surge is a failure despite the reductions in violence, but I could be wrong about that, and the piece is good either way.
Following up on yesterday's post which poorly applied concepts from political philosophy to statements of James Dobson and then discusse about how poor Richard Cohen's column was, Fontana Labs has a good post applying John Doris's (and other's) work on situationalism and the fundamental attribution error to that same Richard Cohen column. If you don't know what those things are, his post makes it clear (though doesn't use those terms) and is interesting besides.
Lots of people in my neighborhood have Obama signs in their window. I wonder if this would be legible if I put it in mine.
Finally, a guide to every slice-serving pizzeria in Park Slope, which will be of great use to me in my new digs. The only one in the guide which I've been to is Joe's Pizza of the Village, which seems to be his third or fourth favorite (he's only specific about ranking the top two, and otherwise mostly discusses the characteristics of each slice), I liked it and am excited to try out a lot of the others.
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Following up on yesterday's post which poorly applied concepts from political philosophy to statements of James Dobson and then discusse about how poor Richard Cohen's column was, Fontana Labs has a good post applying John Doris's (and other's) work on situationalism and the fundamental attribution error to that same Richard Cohen column. If you don't know what those things are, his post makes it clear (though doesn't use those terms) and is interesting besides.
Lots of people in my neighborhood have Obama signs in their window. I wonder if this would be legible if I put it in mine.
Finally, a guide to every slice-serving pizzeria in Park Slope, which will be of great use to me in my new digs. The only one in the guide which I've been to is Joe's Pizza of the Village, which seems to be his third or fourth favorite (he's only specific about ranking the top two, and otherwise mostly discusses the characteristics of each slice), I liked it and am excited to try out a lot of the others.
Brand dilution
Obama has sold his campaign, as being about bringing real change to Washington, or change we can believe in. This is unsurprising, in the U.S., challengers always seem to run on bringing change to the corrupt culture of Washington. But he seems to have convinced a good number of people that he's not just saying it. If I'm right that he has convinced people of this, shouldn't his campaign be worried about claiming that every Democrat running for office is part of that real change? Surely some of them aren't, and it gets harder to believe that any of them actually represent real change I can believe in when it's claimed that all of them do.
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Tuesday
Because I'm right
Dobson reserved some of his harshest criticism for Obama's argument that the religiously motivated must frame debates over issues like abortion not just in their own religion's terms but in arguments accessible to all people.I was going to try to explain why Dobson is completely wrong here with reference to the Rawlsian doctrine of Overlapping Consensus, but it turns out I'm confusing my Rawls and I wanted to refer to the concept of Public Justification. Anyway, in short, while different people can support policies for different reasons internal to their “comprehensive doctrine” (which might be a religious belief, but also might be any other kind of belief system) they should also be able to argue for that policy based upon a public justification which doesn't presume all of the premises of their comprehensive doctrine. That way people of different comprehensive doctrines can agree on the legitimacy of a policy. I think I might be getting the level of abstraction at which Rawls applies these ideas totally wrong, but oh well. Dobson's position seems to be that he'll just persuade the people who already agree with him, and shouldn't be required to convince anyone else of anything.He said Obama, who supports abortion rights, is trying to govern by the "lowest common denominator of morality," labeling it "a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."
"Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?" Dobson said. "What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe."
Bonus stupid things people are saying while bashing Obama: “But what is far less forgivable is the socialist realism language he used to rationalize his decision.” It is my position that Richard Cohen does not know how to write in English and does not have an editor. While socialist realism is a style of art, the phrase “socialist realism language” does not refer to anything. For a more substantive criticism of the same Cohen column, which in short says that despite the fact that John McCain has changed his views on almost everything, we know where he stands, apparently, but not where Obama does because he didn't follow through on his pledge to “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a public ally financed general election,” see Publius.
Monday
This blog will make you poor
Insofar as this post, on how to maximize the amount of meat you get from a lobster, leads you to purchase a lobster instead of other, cheaper food which would have substituted for it.
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Labels: Non fafblog Lobsters
MAD, mad, I tell you
Post of the day, don't bomb Iran division: Publius1 ably points out that John Bolton's argument for bombing Iran relies on internally inconsistent premises. To wit, the supposed reason to bomb Iran before they can develop nuclear weapons is that normal deterrence, in which countries don't launch nuclear first strikes because they would in turn be destroyed, doesn't apply to Iran because it values destroying Israel (the presumed target of its nuclear weapons) more than national survival. Now comes Bolton to argue that Iran wouldn't seriously retaliate against bombings to destroy their uranium enrichment program (my understanding of the National Intelligence Estimate is that they don't have a nuclear weapons program besides this) because they'd be too afraid of further attacks if they did. Apparently because they're subject to deterrence by minor threats2, but not by major ones.
1. I considered following Bluebook rule 15.8(c)(i) in citing to this post. I think this means I've lost my mind.
2. Pun intended.
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1. I considered following Bluebook rule 15.8(c)(i) in citing to this post. I think this means I've lost my mind.
2. Pun intended.
Labels: Walruses
Friday
Seriously, fuck you
Fuck you, Michael Gerson. Your article makes as much sense as one questioning Schwarzenegger's suitability for the governor's mansion because one of the character's in Total Recall has three breasts.
Via Josh Marshall
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Via Josh Marshall
Punchline
The House Judiciary Committee held hearings today so that Scott McClellan could testify about his book. I don't know if this is a good use of the Judiciary Committee's time, it could be if there were important items that they wanted read into the record or to otherwise have media attention focused upon, but I'm sincerely uncertain and that's not what I wanted to talk about, anyway. In his opening remarks (link is to a word document because I can't find Smith's prepared statement posted anywhere else, including his own web site) ranking minority member Lamar Smith both mocked the committee for holding the hearings and attacked McClellan in a variety of ways, wrapping up by saying, “While we may never know the answers, Scott McClellan alone will have to wrestle with whether it was worth selling out the President and his friends for a few pieces of silver.” How McClellan1 possibly resisted responding to that by saying, “I'm very interested in your theory about how George W. Bush is the second coming of Christ, can you please say more on this point?” is a mystery I don't believe I'll ever know the solution to.
1. Given the format of the hearing, in which McClellan and others gave prepared statements and then McClellan answered questions, it's not clear to me that he ever had an opportunity to respond. But if he didn't, Smith's fellow committee members certainly could have as a prelude to their own questions, and someone should have said this, dammit.
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1. Given the format of the hearing, in which McClellan and others gave prepared statements and then McClellan answered questions, it's not clear to me that he ever had an opportunity to respond. But if he didn't, Smith's fellow committee members certainly could have as a prelude to their own questions, and someone should have said this, dammit.
Thursday
Blogging the panopticon
I have issues with the style of Glenn Greenwald's writing, so I don't read him often. But in some ways he's indispensable. His recent posts on the soon to be voted on FISA compromise bill which will result in full immunity for telecommunications companies who decided to assist the federal government in breaking laws designed to create accountability and standards for government decisions to listen to private communications are required reading, as is his post arguing that Obama needs to be pressured to take an active role in opposing passage of this compromise and deserves criticism for recording an ad supporting a conservative Democrat against that Democrat's more progressive opponent.
For a tiny bit of original content/reporting, I was recently at a luncheon where the featured speaker was, among many other roles and titles he's held, one of of the original judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (I'm not naming him because I don't like to blog about co-workers, though I'm obviously doing so whether or not I name him, so perhaps it's a foolish precaution). During a question and answer period, he was asked what he thought of the current FISA situation, and seemed to be personally offended that the government was circumventing FISC Judges, noting that when he'd been on the court he was available at whatever hour was necessary to hear requests for surveillance even if he needed to travel to locations with encrypted phone lines in order to do so. He simply found it absurd that the government acted as if having to go before such a court was too much oversight. I don't know this person well, but it's also worth mentioning that every article which mentions him and discusses his political affiliation describes him as a Republican, though on the other hand those articles refer to his party from the 1970s and 1980s.
Update (3:57 6/20): Every person listed under Yeas at this link should be punched in the face. Every Democrat so listed should be punched in the face and then kicked in the shin, or somewhere else suitable.
Update II (5:38 6/20) (That Greenwald style I decried below is contagious!): It seems all too likely that sometime next week I'll be suggesting that future President of the United States Barack Obama should be punched in the face and then kicked in the shin. In regards to which, a brief note to the Secret Service: Brandenburg, Brandenburg, Brandenburg.
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For a tiny bit of original content/reporting, I was recently at a luncheon where the featured speaker was, among many other roles and titles he's held, one of of the original judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (I'm not naming him because I don't like to blog about co-workers, though I'm obviously doing so whether or not I name him, so perhaps it's a foolish precaution). During a question and answer period, he was asked what he thought of the current FISA situation, and seemed to be personally offended that the government was circumventing FISC Judges, noting that when he'd been on the court he was available at whatever hour was necessary to hear requests for surveillance even if he needed to travel to locations with encrypted phone lines in order to do so. He simply found it absurd that the government acted as if having to go before such a court was too much oversight. I don't know this person well, but it's also worth mentioning that every article which mentions him and discusses his political affiliation describes him as a Republican, though on the other hand those articles refer to his party from the 1970s and 1980s.
Update (3:57 6/20): Every person listed under Yeas at this link should be punched in the face. Every Democrat so listed should be punched in the face and then kicked in the shin, or somewhere else suitable.
Update II (5:38 6/20) (That Greenwald style I decried below is contagious!): It seems all too likely that sometime next week I'll be suggesting that future President of the United States Barack Obama should be punched in the face and then kicked in the shin. In regards to which, a brief note to the Secret Service: Brandenburg, Brandenburg, Brandenburg.
Wednesday
Related
A couple reacts immediately after an earthquake struck
during their wedding photo shoot at a deserted catholic
seminary in Pengzhou in southwest China's Sichuan
province Monday May 12, 2008. Five couples were having
wedding photos taken when the earthquake struck, and
all escaped without injury. The century-old seminary was
destroyed in the quake, which left tens of thousands
dead in Sichuan. (AP Photo)
during their wedding photo shoot at a deserted catholic
seminary in Pengzhou in southwest China's Sichuan
province Monday May 12, 2008. Five couples were having
wedding photos taken when the earthquake struck, and
all escaped without injury. The century-old seminary was
destroyed in the quake, which left tens of thousands
dead in Sichuan. (AP Photo)
The photo and caption above are from an excellent and fairly new Boston Globe site (the NYTimes City Room blog, when linking to it, referred to it as a blog but I don't know what about its format makes it a blog as opposed to another form of web presence. But describing too many things as blogs is perhaps a rant for another time) which presents large size high quality photographs relating to various news events, and is cleverly entitled “The Big Picture.” The blog has only existed since May and is full of images which are alternately beautiful, awe-inspiring, and disturbing. Read the entire blog archive, it won't take long.
And if you take a look at the set of photos Big Picture posted yesterday, you'll notice that the Mississippi flooding has caused a great deal of damage in Iowa and elsewhere. I've been made to understand that the Red Cross is “strapped for [disaster relief] funds.” If you choose, you can donate here to the Red Cross's national office or here to one of the chapters covering some of the most severely effected areas.
Tuesday
Jeff Koons stopped eating cars, now he only eats guitars
I don't feel competent to say much about most purely visual art, though I would have some things to say about a film even if it functioned purely visually and non-narratively, but I liked this article about a major retrospective on the art of Jeff Koons in Chicago, and the following, concluding section especially.
With Koons, it's as though we're seeing objects from our own everyday world transported to a distant place where they have been transformed and reused to vastly different ends, then brought back down to us again without a key to their repurposing, leaving us with no choice but to use them as art. No wonder this show can leave a viewer reeling. Almost every object in it works like a Duchampian ready-made, but at many unearthly removes from its original function. It's as though Duchamp's urinal-become-fountain-become-sculpture were uncovered eons from now, and reused yet again to house a sacred relic. Then buried. Then re-rediscovered and presented as superb ancient art. The object's artistic aura might have been preserved, even increased, with time and its reuses, but its meanings would have become so layered and remote that they could never be deciphered.
Background
I moved about three weeks ago, and this morning realized, while reading this post which is primarily about who is running for Vito Fossella's seat and why it's going to be an open seat, that I hadn't checked what Congressional District my new apartment was in and didn't know who represented it. I've now checked, (it's Nydia Velazquez, and I'm now in the process of reading up on her voting record and biography), and if you live in New York and for whatever reason don't know who your Representative is, or for that matter who your New York State Senator and Assemblyperson, go to this site and enter your address in order to find out. If you don't live in New York, I don't have a link or another way to help you, except to suggest that you consider moving to New York.
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Thursday
I met Harold at the Playboy Party
Disturbing news: Obama and Scarlett Johansson exchange emails.
Update (6/26/08): In some ways more disturbing, Obama denies the report above. Who will get to the bottom of this important issue?
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Update (6/26/08): In some ways more disturbing, Obama denies the report above. Who will get to the bottom of this important issue?
Hyberbole is the worst rhetorical device ever
Hilzoy has mentioned in a couple of posts lately about how she's tired of arguing about whether a particular person is racist, and instead is “interested in . . . the question: when does race play a role in people's thinking that it should not play?” She's right, calling some person a racist because of something they did or said, or even calling that statement or action racist cuts off any further conversation and seems unlikely to either help that person reflect on what might be wrong with what they did or to help others understand why they were wrong to call that action racist, since no further conversation will take place. The reason I'm bringing this up is because the “Obama's Baby Mama” episode has caused me to conclude that the Fox News organization is composed entirely of racists. The fact that Michelle has introduced Obama as her baby's daddy on one documented occasion does not lead me to reconsider.
For the “This is a manufactured liberal outrage” view, see James Joyner or the somewhat less crazy than usual (except for the source she cites for an alleged use by Michelle Obama of “baby daddy” and resorting to her usual tactic of noting that because people are writing her mean, crazy, incorrect, or even racist emails she must therefore be correct) Michelle Malkin, who was on TV during the segment when the offending text appeared. And hey, there are certainly times when I feel that people (incl. liberals) have become outraged without a reason to be offended. That said, for the correct view that Fox should be shunned for pulling this kind of crap, John Scalzi has the best take by far.
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For the “This is a manufactured liberal outrage” view, see James Joyner or the somewhat less crazy than usual (except for the source she cites for an alleged use by Michelle Obama of “baby daddy” and resorting to her usual tactic of noting that because people are writing her mean, crazy, incorrect, or even racist emails she must therefore be correct) Michelle Malkin, who was on TV during the segment when the offending text appeared. And hey, there are certainly times when I feel that people (incl. liberals) have become outraged without a reason to be offended. That said, for the correct view that Fox should be shunned for pulling this kind of crap, John Scalzi has the best take by far.
Wednesday
Paul was a hero to most
Krugman, that is, and “most” (while used loosely) includes me, for standing up for liberal views and well, the truth, during a relentless march to war and the many other pernicious aspects of the Bush Administration. But he's also managed to agitate me during the primary season, and it seems like the agitation hasn't ended with the primary. On his blog today, he defends Jason Furman from criticism cast Furman's way after Sen. Obama hired him as economic policy director. Krugman obviously likes Furman and respects his work, so you'd think he would note that Furman's hiring is a good thing and a further reason to support Obama. Instead he sees Furman's hiring as an occasion to, depending on your interpretation, either criticize some Obama supporters for not having recognized that Obama had centrist tendencies (mostly because Sen. Obama's health insurance plan doesn't have individual mandates and he criticized Sen. Clinton's plan for having such mandates) or, more bizarrely and therefore less chartiably, criticize Obama for hiring Furman (who, remember, Krugman likes, mostly agrees with, and has cited before) because the hiring indicates Obama is not liberal enough.
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One Thousand Words
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Tuesday
Use Your Head or I'll Take It Off Your Shoulders
Tha Carter III was officially released today (it's apparently been available for perfectly legal downloading since May 30). I haven't heard it, and nearly all the Lil Wayne I know is from Da Drought 3, but the sheer randomness of his lyrics (“And when I was five, my favorite movie was the Gremlins/That ain't got shit to do with this, but I just thought that I should mention.”) and brilliant appropriation of others' beats on that mix tape has led me to listen to it more often than I care to acknowledge. New York magazine's Vulture blog loves the new album, Rolling Stone gives it ☆☆☆☆1/2.
Also, what could Spencer, who's been obsessing over a Nas mix tape today, possibly be trying to imply by saying “I truly wish I didn’t like this one. Really truly. I try very hard to live a Wayne-free existence. But it’s good”?
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Also, what could Spencer, who's been obsessing over a Nas mix tape today, possibly be trying to imply by saying “I truly wish I didn’t like this one. Really truly. I try very hard to live a Wayne-free existence. But it’s good”?
Monday
I think the byline is a typo for “Scott Templeton”
I famously1 once ran a google search for2 “rat in toilet”3 for the most obvious and pressing reason that one might do so. So I was very sympathetic when I read the following:
1. Among a select set of people.
2. Resolved: "googled" is an ugly word, my past use of it not withstanding.
3. The search was not run as a phrase in the original, quotation marks merely indicate the search terms.
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Next he did a Google search for “what to do if you get locked in a bar.” “But Google did not have any good answers,” he said.The article that it comes from is here, but those couple of sentences probably tell you all you need to know. Except for the answers to these obvious questions: is the New York Times so hard up for stories that someone locking themselves in a bar twenty days ago now counts as news? Is the reporter pulling a prank on the paper? I locked myself in my own backyard quite recently (because I'm an idiot) and can report that the press has not been beating down my door to hear the thrilling details of that adventure.
1. Among a select set of people.
2. Resolved: "googled" is an ugly word, my past use of it not withstanding.
3. The search was not run as a phrase in the original, quotation marks merely indicate the search terms.
Friday
Morlocks!
I wanted to ask for survival tips in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe (say for instance current France/Benelux/Germany) in the year 1000 AD (plus or minus 200 years). I assume that such transportation would leave me with what I am wearing, what I know, and nothing else. Any advice would help.
Tyler gives some reasonable advice, the commenters give some other, mostly unreasonable advice, but let me pitch the canonical solution from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: today, right now, memorize an historical eclipse table so you can predict them. Or, slightly more realistically, learn your history well enough that you can first figure out what year you're in (this will be difficult, because information won't travel particularly fast and might be heavily distorted by the time it reaches you) and then take advantage of your foreknowledge by either wisely investing (horde food before a historically significant famine, ally with the winning side in wars, etc.) or just by making predictions and gaining a reputation as an oracle.
Wednesday
I Nominated my DJ for President
False statement of the day: "In just a few years in office, Senator Obama has accumulated the most liberal voting record in the Senate." Sen. John McCain, during his speech from New Orleans last night
I wish this were true, because I'm a liberal, I'd like to elect the most liberal Senator, and I'd like it to be the case that the most liberal Senator would win the Democratic Presidential primary, but it's not. Not only is it not, but there is literally no basis for claiming that he's accumulated the most liberal voting record in this Senate over his 4 years there, it's just made up. There is a basis for claiming he was the most liberal Senator in 2007, but that basis is a very thin reed, one, obviously flawed study in which by far the main reason that Obama came out as more liberal than e.g. Feingold is that he missed 33 of the 99 votes in their sample due to campaigning, and voted in the liberal position on 65 of the 66 he voted on. Many Senators voted in the liberal position more often, but not in a higher percentage of their votes. Obviously there are arguments about the proper way to rank how liberal or conservative someone is, but one widely used tool is the DW-Nominate rankings. In those rankings, Obama was tied for the 10th most liberal Senator in the 110th Senate through December 2007, and was the 21st most liberal Senator in the 109th Senate.
These details are all interesting, but my main point is that there is no basis at all for believing the thing John McCain said, he has no possible reason to believe it is true, it's not true, and he said it anyway because he thought it would help him get votes. Don't let McCain or his supporters spread this lie.
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I wish this were true, because I'm a liberal, I'd like to elect the most liberal Senator, and I'd like it to be the case that the most liberal Senator would win the Democratic Presidential primary, but it's not. Not only is it not, but there is literally no basis for claiming that he's accumulated the most liberal voting record in this Senate over his 4 years there, it's just made up. There is a basis for claiming he was the most liberal Senator in 2007, but that basis is a very thin reed, one, obviously flawed study in which by far the main reason that Obama came out as more liberal than e.g. Feingold is that he missed 33 of the 99 votes in their sample due to campaigning, and voted in the liberal position on 65 of the 66 he voted on. Many Senators voted in the liberal position more often, but not in a higher percentage of their votes. Obviously there are arguments about the proper way to rank how liberal or conservative someone is, but one widely used tool is the DW-Nominate rankings. In those rankings, Obama was tied for the 10th most liberal Senator in the 110th Senate through December 2007, and was the 21st most liberal Senator in the 109th Senate.
These details are all interesting, but my main point is that there is no basis at all for believing the thing John McCain said, he has no possible reason to believe it is true, it's not true, and he said it anyway because he thought it would help him get votes. Don't let McCain or his supporters spread this lie.
Tuesday
Outsourcing
I agree with this review of From Beruit to Jerusalem in its entirety, except that I haven't read any of Friedman's other books and only assume from the basis of reviews and the quality of his columns that they're unreadable. Some of the commenters have interesting speculations about what led Friedman to transform from the writer of that book to the writer he is today.
I don't agree with this review at all, since it's for a new Charlie Kauffman movie showing at Cannes that I haven't seen. But I am now very excited about the movie.
Who do you love?
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I don't agree with this review at all, since it's for a new Charlie Kauffman movie showing at Cannes that I haven't seen. But I am now very excited about the movie.
Who do you love?
Obama agonistes*
Eight page essay of the day, U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division: I missed this when it was published almost a month ago, but I found Charlie Pierce's "The Cynic and Senator Obama" moving, even when I disagreed with it, which I did fairly often. However, I question (because I actually don't understand) what it is he's trying to get across in the very last multi-sentence. I don't know what his claimed naiveté is meant to consist of there. Anyway, the piece is good, though not quite good enough to make forgive Pierce his Boston-fandom. I can imagine complaints that the piece is over-written or too stylized, and I can only note that I'd disagree.
On the other hand, Richard Cohen should be forbidden from writing anything ever again. Mostly it's just the stupidity of the first paragraph, and how it's totally disconnected from the rest of the op-ed, which lists some reasonable and some unreasonable complaints about the primary campaign and its coverage. But Cohen's whole premise is that when people say this a historic campaign, they're talking about the day to day minutia of the campaign, when this could not be further from the truth, and nothing he says vaguely supports it. The last two paragraphs are also disconnected from the litany of complaints in the middle.
*Dammit, my title has been coined by other bloggers.
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On the other hand, Richard Cohen should be forbidden from writing anything ever again. Mostly it's just the stupidity of the first paragraph, and how it's totally disconnected from the rest of the op-ed, which lists some reasonable and some unreasonable complaints about the primary campaign and its coverage. But Cohen's whole premise is that when people say this a historic campaign, they're talking about the day to day minutia of the campaign, when this could not be further from the truth, and nothing he says vaguely supports it. The last two paragraphs are also disconnected from the litany of complaints in the middle.
*Dammit, my title has been coined by other bloggers.
Monday
Things I was recently wrong about
Unfortunately certain to be a continuing feature: I claimed on Memorial Day that Memorial Day was the holiday which used to be Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War One. In fact, Memorial Day evolved from Decoration Day, honoring the Civil War dead, and it's Veteran's Day which used to be Armistice Day. Management regrets the error and will sack those responsible.
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Pointless
Post of the day, 2008 New Jersey Democratic Senatorial Primary division: NJPoliticker recaps a Lautenberg-Andrew's debate. I also somewhat strongly recommend last week's New York Times article about how the Representatives in the New Jersey House delegation all agreed not to challenge Lautenberg in this cycle, then Andrews, party to the agreement, challenged him anyway, and how most of the Democrats in New Jersey have responded by freezing him out. This blog's official stance is against incumbency protection rackets, and there doesn't approve of that agreement, but disapproves breaking your word in such a self-regarding way even moreso. On the other hand, this blog recently heard Lautenberg talk to Brian Lehrer on the radio and came away disturbed by how shallow his grasp on many issues seemed to be. He seemed to just have a couple of talking points memorized which he went back to whenever Lehrer pressed him. On the other other hand, this list of their issue positions (and the comments on them) makes Lautenberg look to be the candidate with the views most congenial to my own. This blog therefore endorses Frank Lautenberg, and since no one who lives in New Jersey will read this before tomorrow night, that endorsement should have an enormous effect on the outcome of the race. No one seems to have polled the race since April 30th, at which time Lautenberg was leading Andrews 35% to 20%.
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Distractions
Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Presidential election division: I thought Hilzoy's post from the middle of last week on how trivialities distract us and get the lion's share of the news coverage while genuinely important policy differences are elided was well-written as usual and worth keeping in my mind. While it's far from novel to point out how insubstantial many things which get news coverage are, an occasional reminder of the exact state of affairs is helpful. I also wanted to mention that Huma "Hillary Clinton's lesbian lover" Abedin is not a lesbian and is dating Anthony Weiner, which is yet another reason to dislike Anthony Weiner.
The obsessively-updated delegate tracking spreadsheet is, unsurprisingly, updated. It includes the results from Puerto Rico as well as the allocations from Michigan and Florida following the ruling from the Rules & Bylaws Committee. According to these numbers, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead and Barack Obama is still certainly going to be the Democratic Party Nominee for the Presidency of the United States.
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The obsessively-updated delegate tracking spreadsheet is, unsurprisingly, updated. It includes the results from Puerto Rico as well as the allocations from Michigan and Florida following the ruling from the Rules & Bylaws Committee. According to these numbers, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead and Barack Obama is still certainly going to be the Democratic Party Nominee for the Presidency of the United States.
